Sunday, May 21, 2006

Congress to Investigate Report of Marine Massacre

Howling Latina earlier noted as a sidebar that eyewitness accounts of Marines killing innocent Iraqis had initially been reported as a sad incident involving a sideroad bomb.

Rep. John Murtha created a tempest last Wednesday during a press conference when he broke the story. MSNBC later confirmed it.

Now it looks like Congress wants to get in the action. After ignoring every scandal down the pike, the GOP has finally decided during an election year to hold an oversight hearing.

Someone fairly cynical might wonder if the fact that major newsorganizations are predicting the political Apocalypse for Republicans in the fall has more than a little something-something to do with it.

You know, anything to help Thelma and Geoff; and Nancy and Chris and other imperiled GOPers; but naaah, perish the thought!

Editor and Publisher reports that House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter of California is making noises about a hearing, not to find out exactly what happened, but to learn how the military investigation was carried out.

Hunter...said Friday that the results of the investigation are expected to be delivered to Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of Multi-national Corps Iraq, late next week, and a hearing could occur shortly thereafter.

The government has never denied Murtha's accusation; and the Pentagon investigation, according to Murtha, "will show that U.S. Marines 'killed innocent civilians in cold blood'".

Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right.

A videotape taken by an Iraqi showed the aftermath of the alleged attack: a blood-smeared bedroom floor and bits of what appear to be human flesh and bullet holes on the walls.

The video, obtained by Time magazine, was broadcast a day after town residents told The Associated Press that American troops entered homes on Nov. 19 and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine.

Well, let's hope any hearing is more substantive than the horse-and-pony show of Arlen Specter's Judiciary Committee hearing last February into government spying, although Howling Latina is not going to hold her breath.

I wonder if the foreign press is going to couch this episode with language full of conditional phasing, such as "if this is true...; this not yet confirmed report....; The Marine corps disputes the claim...; The investigative techniques have been questioned...etc. etc." I think not. Only in American would something like this get spun to the point of becoming so murky that the story may be quickly ignored. Elsewhere this will not be forgotten. Those people killed will be missed for a lifetime and the cause of their death will be rememeber at least as long.